While many people focus on how many calories are burned while training, cycling, swimming, or lifting weights, there is one other important component to calorie burning that you may be overlooking.
In simpler terms, the “afterburner effect” is essentially the calories that you continue to burn after exercising.
The Post-Combustion Effect
Just so you understand, this is because our bodies consume additional energy (calories) after certain workouts to help us recover, cool down, and deal with the hormonal changes that exercise produced.
The scientific name for this process is excess post-exercise oxygen consumption.
What does the research we now have available tell us regarding the benefits of the afterburner effect for the future of our workouts?
By properly planning your exercise routine so that you do the right types of high intensity exercise several times a week, you will gain the ability to burn more fat in less time.
Sounds too good to be true… but this is what this phenomenon is all about.
The Post-Combustion Effect Fully Explained
The key to increasing the after effects of your workouts, so you can burn more calories throughout the day, is to practice high intensity exercises.
This is because the afterburner effect is small after traditional steady-state cardio exercises such as jogging, but is significantly higher after intense workouts such as sprinting, circuit, strength, and explosion activities.
If your goals are to build muscle quickly, increase your cardiovascular health, and not go through the loads of time you need to exercise, you should do short, intermittent and intense workouts. What has been the famous HIIT?
Interval Training
The benefits of high intensity interval training – HIIT, are increased strength, better speed, and better fat burning, all in ways where steady state cardio-training simply cannot create comparatively.
In general, the more intense the exercise, the greater the post-burn effect. This means that a 20-minute-long workout that involves running (or practicing another form of burst training or vigorous activity) as fast as possible for 30 seconds, repeated for 10 rounds with 90-second rest periods, will have a longer post. -combustion.
Effect compared to doing steady-state exercises like running moderately for 30 minutes.
How Many Extra Calories Will the Effect Consume After Intense Exercise?
It is difficult to estimate an exact amount as each person reacts to high intensity exercise differently.
Factors such as current activity level, gender, age, duration, and intensity of training can influence the magnitude of afterburning.
That said, a study published in the Journal of Exercise Science showed that the afterburner effect is associated with a rise in metabolism due to the thermal effect of activity regardless of your current fitness level, and some experts believe this can cause around a 10 percent increase in calorie expenditure for the next day from just 20 minutes of high intensity exercise.
In other words, if for example you are an active woman who normally burns 2,000 calories a day, taking into account your additional energy needs could mean that you are now burning 2,200.
Scientific Breakdown of The Post-Combustion Effect
HIIT workouts increase your metabolism; in other words, they raise your total energy expenditure, which is the number of calories your body burns for energy each day.
You can think of energy expenditure as the amount of energy a person consumes throughout the day doing all bodily activities, whether it’s walking, showering, or bending over.
We all consume energy in the form of calories every time we breathe, move, digest food, and our heart pumps blood, so most of our energy expenditure is done without our realizing or straining.
When it comes to exercise, of course, we realize our best effort and therefore the greatest amount of energy that we are using.
But the energy expenditure of a workout is the total measure of calories burned during and after exercise, so as long as we can push ourselves in the gym and “feel the burn,” we actually continue to use extra energy once the workout is over. even realize it.
As you learn, certain forms of exercise (high intensity) mark the energy burned after exercise better than others. And after intense exercise, your body has to work twice as hard to replenish its oxygen stores than after steady-state exercise.
Knowing COPD
The technical name for calories burned after exercise is “excessive oxygen consumption after exercise,” or COPD. The evidence suggests an exponential relationship between exercise intensity and the magnitude of EPOC.
The term COPD describes the fact that at higher exercise intensities, oxygen consumption is not proportional to heat expenditure.
In other words, COPD results in an oxygen debt because this is how the body works to recover after a hard workout and brings the organs, heart, and hormones to a state of rest.
The oxygen debt component is part of the reason why there is a post-combustion effect because it affects energy use; in fact, this process of returning the body to homeostasis and normalizing metabolism after vigorous activity can take up to three days.
The more often you do intense workouts, the more it pays – the International Journal of Sports Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism reports that EPOC varies as a function of metabolic stress and that more training improves the efficiency of metabolic regulation during recovery from exercise.
COPD is not the only thing that explains the post-combustion effect. Other aspects have to do with the body’s production of lactic acid and the process of hypertrophy, or building muscle mass.
Think of it this way: if you use your muscles and produce higher levels of lactic acid (the chemical reaction that is responsible for the “burn” you feel when your muscles are fatigued), then you are causing damage to muscle tissue on a microscopic level that must be repaired.
This requires energy because it involves the body breaking down amino acids (proteins) in the muscles and then rebuilding them. In the process, intense exercise also increases testosterone naturally, which can mean more muscle gain.
This process of establishing new proteins to build bigger and stronger back muscles increases your total energy expenditure, and basically this all happens after you finish exercising.
Using the Post-Combustion Effect to Burn More Fat
For years, we have been led to believe that exercising for longer periods of time results in more calories burned, and therefore better body composition.
But in recent years, the idea that you can achieve your goals by following an exercise regimen that is actually the opposite is now backed by a growing field of research.
A 2011 report published in the Journal of Obesity states that while the effects of regular aerobic exercise on body fat are generally negligible, intense forms of exercise can have a greater impact on body composition.
“Emerging research examining high intensity intermittent exercise (HIIE) indicates that it may be more effective in reducing subcutaneous and abdominal body fat than other types of exercise.”
This is exactly why I believe that high intensity interval training is the # 1 exercise to help burn belly fat fast.
During aerobic exercise, your muscles use glucose (sugar) primarily for energy. But on the other hand, during the longer recovery period described above, the body mainly uses fatty acids in addition to glucose.
This translates to burning fatter while building more muscle. That’s important because, even at rest, muscle burns more calories than stored body fat.
How Much Intense Exercise Do You Need to Do?
This depends on the intensity of your workouts. For example, the World Health Organization has stopped recommending steady-state exercise and now advises the following:
- Adults 18-64 should get at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity during the week, OR get at least 75 minutes of vigorous intensity aerobic physical activity during the week, OR an equivalent combination of moderate and vigorous intensity activity.
3 Ways to Create an Afterburner Effect
Here are three ways to practice high intensity exercise to dial in your afterburner effect:
Cycling, Using the Elliptical or Rowing
Instead of doing steady-state cardio for 50 minutes, divide this amount in half and use interval training. The interval training combines high intensity exercise and short bursts of high intensity with slow recovery phases.
These intervals are repeated throughout a short session (15-20 minutes). Intense parts are performed at a maximum heart rate of 85 percent -100 percent, instead of the 50 percent -70 percent that is the average level of moderate resistance activity.
An easy way to practice HII T is to push yourself as hard as you can for about 20-30 seconds, then take a break for about 60 seconds.
Repeat this cycle for the duration of your exercise. The shorter the rest interval, the more difficult it will be. You should feel fatigued afterwards!
Weight Lifting or Resistance
Practice circuit training or complete “supersets.” Supersets are when you go from one exercise directly to the next, without resting in between.
You work hard on one muscle group until you’re tired, then move on to another right after.
- Superset and muscle recovery time
In other words, use opposing muscle groups, so that while one is resting, you train the other. For example, you can start with squats working primarily on your legs, then move to a bench press working primarily on your upper body.
Or you go from back paddles to chest presses.
Also, to radically change your routine, try HIIT by incorporating some full-body kettlebell workouts or doing CrossFit workouts.
Sprint
This is probably the most popular way to practice HIIT and achieve high post-burn effects.
This model follows the same idea as for cycling or rowing mentioned above: swap a longer and more stable workout for a shorter but intense one. And I mean intense!
- Fartlek Workout: Explanation and 30 Minute Routine
During your sprints, you really want to push yourself, almost like you are running because your life depends on it. Try to run for a total of 10-15 minutes to start, using 90-second intervals. This means working hard for 30 seconds and then resting for a minute.
Repeat the cycles until you are about 15 minutes or a little longer once you’ve been doing HIIT for a while.
You can practice this outdoors or take it indoors for an intense burst training session on a treadmill.
Future Research and Precautions Regarding the Post-Combustion Effect
There is still a lot to learn about the afterburner effect and how exactly it works.
Almost every aspect of a workout – from the number of reps and sets completed, the number of rest periods between sets, intensity, speed, types of movements performed, and a person’s heart rate – can affect the spectacularism of the after-effect. combustion.
It appears that well-trained people have a more rapid return of post-exercise metabolism to resting levels after exercise; therefore, they are likely to get the most out of it when it comes to HIIT workouts.
However, there are also many benefits for people who start to exercise, assuming they start slowly and avoid injury.
One of the biggest challenges could be encouraging HIIT beginners and those with significant weight to lose it with intense exercise programs that can increase its post-burn effect, as intensity can be intimidating.
If you are doing HIIT for the first time, keep your workouts shorter, around 10 minutes, and use a method that you feel comfortable with such as running (on grass or a treadmill) or riding a bike.
Regardless of how fit you already are, HIIT workouts shouldn’t be done every day because this can increase your risk of injury; they are best when completed only two or three times a week (or even less in some cases).
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